Short of measuring your feet, you might try measuring some of your shoes to provide Vass with a reference. Mr. Kuti just provided me with some measurements for the New Peter and Budapest lasts so I could compare. Maybe a little tricky being confident about the measurement of the interior foot bed length, but I'm sure it can be done to a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Or maybe it is just as easy to go the route of measuring your feet for them. Seems like that's a very good way to get a solid recommendation on sizing.

Δ ultimately, you just have to take a gamble because after a point, the more you read the more confused you become. Also, Mr. Kuti will give me sizing advice which in my case matched personal research.

F last - us12=45

If you have a narrow foot, go with one of the the sleeker Italian lasts. Not sure if vass does narrow widths in the classic lasts

I just made my first direct Vass purchase using CurrencyFair, and I ought to share this with you guys.

I used CurrencyFair to get a low transfer fee and a reasonable exchange rate. The idea is simply to get the shoes at the lowest price possible. In all, I paid 433 euro for a pair of F lasted shoes, but apparently I overpaid by 10 euro so it's actually 423 euro. This is excluding VAT, and includes 30 euro for shoetrees, 20 euro for topy, 35 for the FedEx delivery, 5 euros for the bank receiving fee, and 3 euros for the CurrencyFair transfer fee.

So that works out to be 8 euro for the total transfer fee.

As for the setting up of the CF account, it was pretty hassle-free as well. It is like setting up a Hotmail account, except that they need documents to prove your identity and address. They took only one day to approve the account. With regards to account security and customer service, it is pretty darn good! They usually respond to emails within an hour or two (I don't know about phone calls). As for security, they have segregated accounts for client funds and company funds. Account transactions require a PIN, from which they require three digits randomly picked from the full set of 6 digits that they give to you. The PIN digits are selected from a drop-down menu, so I guess that safeguards your account against key-loggers.

I only faced two problems.

First, CF does not have local accounts in every country. When I first registered for CF, they did not have a local account in my country. Fortunately for me, they were planning to get one set up in my country within that very week. The implications of CF not having a local CF account would be the charge of a conventional bank transfer fee required for deposit of funds into the third-party CF bank account. This pretty much screws the notion of a cheap fund transfer. The 3 euro CF transfer fee only applies to a standard 1-2 day transfer of funds out of the CF account into the Vass account; the transfer of funds from your bank account to the CF local account is supposed to be free, and it was for me.

Second, no one has any idea what the bank receiving fee for CIB bank (Vass) is. CF will ask you to enquire from CIB, and CIB will give you different stupid answers every time you ask. The problem with using a third-party bank account is that you have to figure out the receiving bank fee on your own. Here is where my advice comes in. It is only freaking 2 to 5 euro, so do not overpay like me. Vass told me it was 10 to 15 euro, which is not true of this transaction (but I forgive them ). You are supposed to transfer more to cover all bank fees, which is max 5 euro if you are using CF.

So if you plan to use CF, all you need to check is if CF has a local bank account in your country. And ta-da, you are good to go. Good luck with your purchases, guys.

Ran into that problem of needing to make a wire transfer to make a wire transfer using CF. They have a correspondent bank in the US, but require the customer to initiate the transfer. So, unless I'm missing some cheap or free way to do this, there's no point in using CF unless I plan to transfer a substantial amount once in order to make separate transfers over time to Vass or others. Probably not buying that many shoes in the near future. So it was back to Western Union at a cost of an extra $25 or so. Of course there's no bank fee from CIB in this case, so the difference is less.

Ran into that problem of needing to make a wire transfer to make a wire transfer using CF. They have a correspondent bank in the US, but require the customer to initiate the transfer. So, unless I'm missing some cheap or free way to do this, there's no point in using CF unless I plan to transfer a substantial amount once in order to make separate transfers over time to Vass or others. Probably not buying that many shoes in the near future. So it was back to Western Union at a cost of an extra $25 or so. Of course there's no bank fee from CIB in this case, so the difference is less.